


Le Refus Absurde

by thankyoufinnick (mildred_of_midgard)



Series: Mags-verse One Shots [4]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen, Hunger Games-Typical Death/Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-11
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-17 03:23:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16508438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mildred_of_midgard/pseuds/thankyoufinnick
Summary: The Capitol is all-powerful. A slip of a girl whose every move is watched stands no chance of changing that. But as a survivor of the Hunger Games, Mags has her own take on impossible odds.Or, how District Four planned a revolution under the noses of the Capitol.





	Le Refus Absurde

Victors and their families get monthly winnings, everyone knows that. Their districts get extra food supplies from the Capitol, everyone knows that as well. But what may be less well known, and so the Capitol is prepared to overlook this transgression, is that victors do not give food away. Victors that do that, and the beneficiaries of their misplaced generosity, find themselves in an awkward position.

Or so Head Peacekeeper Davenport explains to District Four's first victor, in the living room of her house in the Victors' Village.

Mags plays with the end of her long black braid, flipping the strands back and forth over the tip of her finger while she thinks.

She's nineteen years old. She's a very good victor now. She doesn't refuse to mentor any more. She doesn't help kids train for the Games, because that's forbidden. She has only nice words about the Capitol, because quotas are already too high in District Four.

Then Mags looks up at Commander Davenport. She didn't know that giving away food was forbidden, of course. But she's so tiny she only hit the five-foot mark by stretching her spine as high as she could when the Gamemakers measured her. The Capitol didn't take this into account, she thinks, and they send her the same supplies as they send that young lumberjack who won the first ever Games. Or it might be that the Capitol's legendary generosity exceeds her wildest dreams. But either way, she has no more family, and only the appetite of a young girl, so all that food will spoil. And it felt ungrateful to throw out a gift from the Capitol. So she gave it away.

Davenport smiles patronizingly at her. "You districts are so frugal it's quaint. In the Capitol, they throw out food by the ton. How silly of you to worry about it."

Mags is silly, she agrees. Young, ignorant, and silly. She won her Games because her stylist made her into a precious porcelain doll that the audience cooed over, not because she outfoxed twenty-three opponents, half of them older, and didn't flinch when it came time to kill. (Those were the early days. Everyone flinched then. But she can see those innocent times coming to an end already.)

"Well, very good. I can assure my superiors we don't need to fear any repeats. And you understand, of course, that the same goes for money."

Her black eyes fly open, and her mouth opens in shock. "I can't go shopping? What in the rolling sea are my winnings for?"

Davenport looks impatient. "Yes, of course you can go shopping, silly chit. I'm saying you can't keep giving money to kids to buy clothes and medicine. It's as bad as giving them food. Worse."

"I can't have servants?" Righteous indignation breaks through Mags' nice-girl politeness. "I have to scrub my own floors, run my own errands? In the Capitol, no one does manual labor. I thought I was rich!"

That catches Davenport off guard. "These children are your servants, you say?"

"Yes, sir. They do my laundry, they dust, they wash dishes, everything. Their parents have to meet quotas, but they send their children to me to earn a little coin. They say it's good luck to have your children spend time in a victor's house."

Davenport mutters something about district superstition. But it's a superstition the Capitol might like to encourage. "Very well. I will make inquiries."

The next day, he's back at Mags' front door, handing her a stack of paperwork. "Servants, like all employees, have to be registered with the government. You're required to record what labor each one performs, what you pay them, and the taxes you pay on their wages. Those trains don't run themselves, you know."

Of course not, Mags agrees. She didn't mean to cheat anyone. She's just a district girl who's never had anything like employees before. She's not smart about business or paperwork. Yes, back taxes are completely reasonable.

"There are limits on how much they can work, and how much you can pay them. They have to be available to help meet quotas."

Of course. The District's industry is important to the whole country. That's why she chose children in the first place.

"There will be regular inspections to ensure that they're actually performing the labor they're being paid for."

Mags doesn't have any worries, she chooses children she trusts not to take advantage of her, but she appreciates the Capitol's goodwill toward her.

Three months later, Mags is summoned directly to the Justice Hall. She stands in front of a marble-topped desk, hands folded demurely in front of her.

"You were warned about training children for the Hunger Games."

"Training?" Mags' eyes widen. "If anyone's training on my wages, they've been doing it behind my back." 

"Those children you hire? I heard you gather them into the living room and watch old Hunger Games tapes with them, and you explain what the tributes did right or wrong."

"Oh, that? The Hunger Games are such a pivotal part of our great nation. It's never too early to begin to learn the lessons they teach. Who better to instruct them?"

Commander Davenport drums his fingers on his desk. A victor showing the populace Capitol propaganda is hard to complain about. "Very well. There will be no knife-throwing, no weight-lifting, no wall-climbing?"

"No, sir." That was one lesson Mags, or rather Mags' stepsister, learned well.

Apollonia Codwick, sixteen years old, washer of Mags' dishes until she turned twelve, wins the Twenty-first Hunger Games. She nearly loses at the last minute to a boy twice her size, a boy suspiciously comfortable with a sword in his hands, but she keeps her head, confuses him with her net, and doesn't hesitate to grab his fallen sword and impale him on it. Ratings are the highest ever: the first finale with two opponents who held their ground and fought.

When she returns home, she has a sword as a trophy. She allows her servants to admire it, explains terms like hilt, blade, and pommel, and demonstrates both how she used it, and how the boy who had it before her used it. She details the ways in which a sword is similar to and different from a trident, and how spears are even more similar to tridents.

The Capitol, perhaps grudgingly, says nothing.

* * *

"That's a girl's game!" Donny shakes his head disdainfully at Mags and the game pieces spread on her coffee table. "Apollonia's cool. She teaches _real_ skills."

"Maybe you can work for her next year," Mags says unflappably. "Run along home, then. I'm sure your parents miss you."

Mags is used to it. If the Capitol can't see what she's doing, she can't expect some ten-year-olds to. She's playing a numbers game, sacrificing individual pieces to win the game.

She always gets a taker, anyway. Some of the kids will stay the extra half hour, snack on popcorn with her, and play stones-and-lines.

"You can pick black or white," she explains to the boy sitting across from her. "White goes first. Black gets two turns for every one of white's. White has more stones. You and I take turns putting our stones on the board, where the lines cross. You're not allowed to move your stone once you put it down, until it's captured a piece. Capturing works like this. If you surround any of my stones, you get to keep them, and if I surround yours, I get to keep them. Game ends when one of us has no more stones."

Rod nods to show he understood.

"Black or white?" she offers.

"Black."

Most of the kids pick black. The ones who pick white because it moves first are the ones she has least hope for. But every so often, she gets one who picks white because of the challenge. Those are her protégés.

It's true they're usually girls. The boys are just as smart, but more afraid of losing.

"Why are you spending so much time with your servants?" the inevitable question comes.

"The impulses of a woman surrounded by children." Mags smiles at her own foolishness. "I have no little ones of my own to cuddle and tell stories and play games with, you see."

"Nothing stopping you," the commander points out.

Mags spreads her hands disarmingly. "I tried a few boys. I didn't like them. I don't think I'm made for the kind of marriage that brings babies. Besides, I love all the children. I could never choose just one."

He grunts, but Mags was a silly girl who turned into a soft-hearted woman. If she isn't giving them food or money unlawfully, no one cares if they sit on her lap when they're done working.

Year after year, Mags gives her protégés enough confidence to volunteer. And year after year, they come home in a bag. Apollonia screams in frustration, because District Two is obviously training their tributes with weapons, and obviously being allowed, and Mags won't let her.

"Wait. You never learned to play white."

"You out-waited the other tributes. That doesn't work any more, Mags! We're living in a different world."

"Wait."

* * *

Popcorn is fluffy and insubstantial. It's also a Capitol staple when the television is on. So much so, that it would feel weird to hold a Hunger Games viewing party without it.

Seventeen kids, whose parents haven't absolutely forbidden it, meet once a week to watch old Hunger Games. They sit cross-legged on the floor and weave fishing nets, little models of industriousness absorbing Capitol propaganda while munching on popcorn.

With three District Four victors, there are now too many servants to meet in Mags' living room. Permission was granted to use an old warehouse that was due to be torn down. Like every building, it has a television mounted on the wall.

Mags, Apollonia, and Donn all provide commentary on the Games to the viewers. They butter the popcorn heavily, but leave off the salt.

The crown for the Twenty-seventh Hunger Games goes to a boy from District One.

"See how he pulled his arm back when he was throwing that spear?" Donn says. "Watch how he followed through. He didn't stop moving as soon as the spear left his hand." With empty hands, Donn demonstrates the motions, three, four times.

"Notice how as soon as the girl from Seven was down, he didn't freeze and stare at her body," Mags adds. "He immediately looked around for other threats."

"Jetty didn't do that," Pearly speaks up from the floor. She's nine years old and proud of being able to apply her lessons. "He died when the lizard mutt charged him, even though he could have seen it coming and pulled himself up into the tree he was standing under."

"That's right. And which lesson is that?"

"Always watch your back," seventeen children chant in unison.

* * *

"Mags." A small hand tugs on hers. "Mags! Make Brine listen to me."

The academy now has so many children Mags doesn't know all their names. In fifty-eight years, District Four's only turned out six victors, but now it can provide training and food in the evening for all comers eighteen and under.

"Yes, dear?"

"He says I'm seven and I have to stay with the little kids, but I'm bored and I wanna fight. Make him let me in with the ten-year-olds, pleeeease?" He gives her a winning, gap-toothed smile. Mags thinks of all the children she'll never have because of the Hunger Games, and all the children she has because of the Hunger Games.

He keeps his hand tucked in hers as they walk across the warehouse, a dull roar all around them.

"So you want to learn to fight opponents that are bigger than you?"

"I promise I'll win," he says blithely, skipping along. "I only win if it's hard."

When they reach the spread of red mats across one corner of the floor, the boy breaks away from her and starts running. "Brine! Mags wants to talk to you!"

Brine, their latest victor, does strength training and wrestling. Mags hasn't dared to make it official yet, but unofficially, the Capitol doesn't care any more.

That, in itself, is a victory. It doesn't only mean feeding the children who come here, who go to work better fed and grow up to feed and take care of their families. It doesn't only mean more people silently sizing up Peacekeepers instead of automatically cringing when they see one, and what those people might be able to do someday.

It means that if you, a frightened child alone in a hostile universe, keep your wits about you, and play the game, you can place your stones and sacrifice your pieces and place your stones and sacrifice your pieces, and if you keep putting your stones in the right place, year after year, you can wear down a government with all the weapons in the world.

Absurd.

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the French Resistance: the "absurd refusal" of many in occupied France to accept the inevitability of a Nazi victory.


End file.
